


Sweethearts

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:13:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27169141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: On a cold autumn night, Klinger looks for the only kind of peace he's likely to find in Korea.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Sweethearts

“Is this not the sort of thing a pair of teenyboppers might do?” the Major asked, looking down their tangled bodies. 

“It wasn’t something  _ I  _ was getting to do when I was in high school,” said the Corporal snuggled against him. “If you want me wear a letterman jacket or your ring on a chain, I’m all for it, but,”

“Don’t stop kissing you?” Charles guessed, voice knowing and fond. “You were so demure when we started. Whatever has become of my bashful girl?”

Klinger shivered. Charles knew what he was doing with those feminine pronouns. Of course, he was dressed for them - tight, white, collared sweater, high waisted navy skirt with white banding at the hem; Henry Blake would have called it “a real head turner” for sure. 

“Can I be demure and still shove your hand under my skirt?” he quipped. 

Charles pulled an afghan more tightly around them. They weren’t in an ideal spot. Hazy autumn evening scratched at the windows like branches, threatening the warmth they’d found. The door between Klinger’s cot and the main office proper didn’t lock either. 

“If someone happens upon us, what flimsy cover story should you like me to employ?” he teased. 

“You’re resuscitating me. You know those fainting spells I usedta get.” 

“ _ Fake  _ fainting spells. You fell the  _ wrong way _ .”

“Did I? You’re the only gentleman in camp. Maybe I was hoping you’d catch me, Major, or at least help me up.” 

“Had I made the attempt,  _ you  _ would have been working your clever, little tongue between my lips before I could have asked if you were quite well.” 

“Yeah, so?” 

“Quite right. I heard it as I spoke.”

“It might not even be a lie, you know. Fainting. You get me pretty worked up.” 

“I think that you will find that your previous problems had less to do with me and more to do with the corsets I have forbidden you to lace on your own, you ridiculous thing. Not that there is room under this current ensemble for anything of the kind.” 

Klinger gave him a look. 

“That was a  _ compliment _ . You do something quite magical to sweaters. When we return home, I will buy you cashmere and Aran wool - just so I may pet you in them.” 

“You could pet me right now, Major.”

“Major?” 

“Charles?” Klinger tried hopefully. 

“Better. You’re quite sure that is what you want?” They had been taking things very slowly, but it was a cold, dark autumn evening. The dawn practically promised wounded. If Klinger wanted to tremble in his arms, he could think of no truly good reason to try to dissuade the pretty thing. 

Dark eyes locked on his. “You really will?” 

“If you will, ah, consent to make yourself comfortable, I will show you.”

_ Holy Toledo.  _ In the weeks they’d been seeing each other, Klinger had gotten plenty of practice in translating upper class Bostonian. He was pretty sure Charles had just employed that fancy accent of his to say, “spread your legs for me.” Acting on this theory, Klinger did just that, then drew Winchester back into a kiss (the man was a consummate kisser), saying a silent prayer that the next touch he felt would be below the waist. 

_ There we go _ . Through feel alone, Charles navigated the garter belt keeping his stockings in place, the soft, open space between it and his panties… and now he was moving all that silkiness aside to touch him. Breaking a kiss, Klinger made a sound that was eighty percent pure pathos. “I want to kiss you,” he confessed, “but…” 

Charles smiled to see him overcome so easily. All he was doing was learning the contours, sweeping him thumb and fingers over warm flesh, and he was already wrecking this pretty thing. “Just say my name,” he bargained. 

Klinger pushed into his hand. “You can talk to me, too, Charles.”

“Oh? Something you wish to hear in particular, beautiful?”

Klinger whined. “Don’t tease, Major. You know how your voice gets to me.” 

“Then allow me a confession that I think will please you, Max. I wanted to lift your skirts the first day I arrived in this miserable place.” 

Klinger’s hips rocked in answer. “How would you have done it, sir? Where?” 

Charles hadn’t expected this level of eagerness or indulgence. “You believe I could have convinced you even then?”

“In dress browns?” came the disbelieving reply. “When I helped bring your trunk in, I walked right back out and got in my cot to dream about you. If you would’ve been wearing a wedding ring, I don’t know what I would’ve done.” 

Charles slowed his touches; he was teasing, but he rationalized that anyone else would have done the same to prolong indulging in the sweet feel of the man beside him. “Such an adornment would have rendered me off limits in even your fantasies?”

“Standards, sir. I’m not Captain Pierce.”

“Thank God!” He felt laughter cause Klinger’s abdomen to flutter. He increased his pace. “Will you imagine it with me, Max? Imagine that I wasted no time in approaching you? The Captains quite vanished that night after OR. If I could have been brave enough to ask, would you have gotten into my cot with me?” 

A rapid fire nod was his answer; Klinger’s hips echoed the motion at only a slightly slower speed. “Sorry you got transferred somewhere you didn’t want to go, sir,” he said, moving trembling fingers over his cheeks, his mouth. 

Charles gasped at the tenderness in him; it had been months ago, but Max still meant it. “Darling,” he had to clear his throat; emotion had gathered there to block his words. “I would serve in  _ hell _ , my dear girl, to stay by your side.” 

Klinger must have heard the truth of this, because he pulled him down, held him tight against him, tangling their limbs. “I want to stay with you always.” He’d never dared to ask before, but if he was going to belong to Charles all the way, like he’d never belonged to anyone else, he thought the Major ought to know what that meant in his book. “Let me go home with you,” he whispered, pleading. “I’ll stay outta sight if you want. I can work so you don’t have to worry about taking care of me or anything. Just let me see you sometimes.” 

Charles froze above him, braced on his arms. “Maxwell?” 

_ Damn _ . Now he’d gone and wrecked his chance at something really good… maybe  _ for good _ , too.  _ Why can’t you ever let us just have a little fun _ ? he asked his heart, but he knew the answer. He wasn’t made just to be a bedmate, not even for someone as perfect for him as the Major. 

“You don’t hafta say anything, Major baby. It’s okay. Just… just thought I’d try.” He tried to kiss him then, to guide him back toward pure pleasure, but Charles wasn’t having it. 

Charles was quite strong - Max knew this from watching him aid patients - but he was still surprised at how easily the Major repositioned them. Charles lay on his back with Max over him, the blanket once more a shelter for them both. Max was torn between that “demure” stuff he knew the Major liked and just grinding against the one thing that let him know, for sure, how much he got to this beautiful man who was so very far out of his league. 

Charles had chosen this position not for the gratification he might have had of it (he hadn’t tested the theory, but had long suspected that Max could satisfy him from  _ across the room  _ if he begged him with those huge, dark eyes of his), but because it allowed him to arrest and hold that beautiful gaze. “I have been remiss, it seems,” he said, “in making my intentions clear.”

Klinger shivered. Here it was. The old “I’m from society” talk he knew Charles had given other interested parties.  _ Better _ , classier parties, like that French gal who knew about art and music. He was just a dumb kid from downtown Toledo. What had made him think he’d ever have a place on the arm of an educated, successful surgeon? 

_ Well _ , he decided,  _ may as well take this with sugar, _ and kissed his way into the other man’s mouth. Charles sometimes kept his lips closed just for the pleasure of making Max “break in;” the man’s tongue was determined almost unto being sharp, and he always found a clever way inside, trading warmth for warmth and want for want. 

Charles had kissed Klinger quiet before; he’d even kissed him into laying down. Max had never done the same to him and he didn’t resist a fleeting fantasy of being under the power and control of a be-skirted Corporal; maybe he’d lend his love his clusters one night. 

He didn’t really want free, but Max deserved an explanation, so Charles won his way out of the kiss and clenched his fingers in the heavy fabric of the skirt draped over both of them. “Are you trying to, ah, shut me up, pet?” 

“Nah. Just, I know what you’ll say. So why say it? Just… you’ll hang onto me while we’re here, huh? Keep me from being scared?” 

_Have I left you even without so basic a reassurance, my pretty_ _one_? “I am terrible at this,” he murmured. 

“You feel pretty great to me.”

“Do not joke, darling.” He took his hands. 

“Look, I just got carried away. I shouldn’t have said anything. I know where you come from, Major, and where you’re going back to. I know I don’t fit. So, let’s just enjoy what we’ve got. Maybe next year when it’s cold like this back home and the leaves are almost off, you’ll think about me and my skirt.”  _ I for sure know I’ll always be thinking about you.  _

While Charles felt pangs of regret that he had been so remiss in reassuring the man in his arms, he felt a thrill, too, as he prepared to gift his young lover with a truth he’d thought him already in possession of. “Maxwell, next year, if this police action ends and I find myself in my own bed, hiding from the autumn chill, I fully intend that you should be beside me. The skirt is quite optional as I enjoy all of your costumes equally, but your presence is required if I am to have any manner of life after this. What do you say, my dearest one? Will you return with me or will you see me sundered from happiness at the close of this war?”

“You mean it?”

“Maxwell, I, too, am not Pierce. I would not have sought to have you at all if I did not intend that I should keep you and be kept by you in turn. I rather thought you knew.”

He had felt it in the man’s touches, in the press of his mouth on his hair, but he’d thought it at least half-manufactured, wish-fulfillment, the fierceness of his own desire making something out of nothing. He just shook his head. 

“Well, permit me to let you in on a secret, pretty Maxwell.”

Max loved secrets. His happy eyes sparkled. 

“A Winchester is really at his best when he has something to prove. Might you permit me the privilege of convincing you that I intend you to be only mine?”

Klinger pretended to consider, but the way he happily, softly trembled gave him away. 

The location still left something to be desired, Charles reflected, but the act itself had been elevated. He’d intended to please Maxwell as exquisitely as he knew how anyway - he felt it a fine answer to the trust that enabled the Corporal to give himself over to his care - but now he intended that Maxwell should know that he wanted him for always. Though given to tending wounds and repairing flesh, Charles had never been called to write his affection onto another’s body.  _ Yet _ , he reflected,  _ if there was ever a challenge worth, ah, _ **_rising_ ** _ to, my dear, you are certainly it. _

_ But then, perhaps, kneeling might do just as well…  _

He heard the shocked escape of breath as he slid down that slender body. He left Max on his knees and aching for him - but only for a moment. Those eyes found his, flashed alarm. “Major, are you sure you should…”

But strong fingers gripped his thighs, held him in place. Charles was  _ quite _ sure. He didn’t remember being very good at this sort of thing, but he hadn’t been able to resist the visual. Who could have resisted? The warm space formed by those dark thighs became, on contact, Winchester’s own, personal Bermuda Triangle - and he didn’t want rescued. Max anchored himself on his lover’s shoulder as Charles took him deep, eyes flicking up to watch Maxwell shake. It didn’t take long to guide the pretty Corporal over a very steep edge. When he dropped like some internal cord had been cut, Charles caught him in both hands and held him tight, a huff of gentle amusement stirring the dark strands of his hair. “If you continue to look and sound like, you will likely be the death of me, my dearest girl, and I will be  _ smiling _ .” 

Still delightedly shaky, Max declared it his turn, and worked on moving Charles’ clothing out of the way. The Major let him help, but then sat him on his lap, reminded him that he owed him all of the proofs he could compile. He looked and sounded too pretty for Klinger to do anything but enjoy the gift of him… at least until he got so overwhelmed that he had to bury his head in the Major’s neck and moan for him. Charles praised and pleaded for him, his eloquence at a newer, higher pitch. When the end came and tightened his muscles, Max’s mouth was on the pulse in his neck. 

Charles then took charge of rearranging them and no one could have guessed that they’d ever moved from their original, gentle tangle. “Wish I’d known you in high school,” Klinger teased, returning to their original conversation. “I have a lot of catching up to do.”

Charles didn’t let him see how this pleased him. His history in such matters was sparse, but he loved Max and would do anything to please him. “Beloved, I could not have passed any form of schooling - medical or residency, or anything else - if I had been called to pull myself away from your enchanting form. We met just when we were meant to. But, ah, about wearing my ring?” 

After that, the autumn night felt considerably less cold and dark, at least to two forms curled together on a regulation cot just beyond the main office. 

End! 

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
